Once considered the richest city in the world with 365 churches and monumental fortifications, Famagusta in Cyprus has been largely overlooked by much of the world for most of the last century. Recent efforts to draw attention to the importance of the city and its built heritage, such as including the historic walled city on the 2008 and 2010 World Monuments Watch, have encouraged international collaboration and the creation of a revitalization plan for Famagusta. Against the Clock: Saving the Endangered Heritage of Famagusta describes these international partnerships and the various actions taken to preserve the historic structures, including technical missions supported by WMF to inform conservation efforts. This visual tour through the walled city and its churches damaged from a lack of maintenance and exposure to the elements conveys the sense that the clock is ticking.

In March 2013, a group of high school students and faculty from the Ross School in East Hampton, New York, traveled to Ethiopia. This midwinter term course provided an intensive experience in documentary photography and filmmaking in a distant land and culture. The group visited the site of Lalibela with WMF local representative Mamo Getahun, and produced this video about WMF’s efforts to preserve Biet Gabriel Rafael, one of the eleven rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, carved some 800 years ago.

A sandstone ridge rising some 500 meters above the parched sands of southern Mali, the 150-kilometer-long Bandiagara Escarpment has served as a cultural crossroads for more than 2,000 years. One of West Africa’s most impressive sites, the escarpment was first settled by the Toloy in the third century B.C.

The 2012 World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize has been awarded to the Architectural Consortium for Hizuchi Elementary School for the restoration of Hizuchi Elementary School. Located in Yawatahama City, Ehime Prefecture, Japan, the school is a post-war functionalist wood school designed by Masatsune Matsumura (1913–1993), a once little-known, but now greatly admired Japanese municipal architect. The school was completed between 1956 and 1958 and restored by the Consortium between 2006 and 2009.

Included in the 2012 World Monuments Watch, the New York Studio School hosted a day-long drawing marathon to celebrate Watch Day. Art students created large scale charcoal drawings of the Whitney Studio’s magnificent bas-relief ceiling and fireplace, created by Robert Winthrop Chanler between 1918 and 1923.

Built during the early seventeenth century, Zamość Synagogue is one of the few surviving Renaissance synagogues in Poland and is one of the most architecturally significant synagogues in the country. It is located in the Old Town of Zamość, which was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for being one of the most beautiful and enduring examples of Renaissance urban planning in Europe. The synagogue is a seamless addition to the streetscape, contributing to the stylistic homogeneity of the town.

Since 1965, World Monuments Fund (WMF) has helped save hundreds of sites in more than 90 countries. Our projects range from mapping ancient cities to conserving modern masterpieces. This 4-minute video provides a snapshot of key WMF projects and our five core programs of advocacy, education and training, cultural legacy, capacity building, and disaster recovery.

Abstract:

Tracing the origins of World Monuments Fund (WMF) to 1965, this publication explains how James A. Gray, a retired U.S. Army Colonel, created the non-profit, New York-based International Fund for Monuments, the first private organization to focus on the conservation of important buildings, archaeological sites, and works of art on a global scale. Early projects included work at the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, Ethopia, conservation of the statues of Easter Island, and restoration of several important buildings following intense flooding in Venice in 1966. Following Gray’s retirement, Bonnie Burnham took the helm in 1984, at which point the organization was renamed the World Monuments Fund. In addition to new projects in Mexico City and St. Trophime, France, Burnham helped to develop an increasingly close relationship with the Kress Foundation, which sponsored the WMF European Preservation Program in 1987. The late 1980s also saw the establishment of the Jewish Heritage Program. By the early 1990s, WMF was expanding its operations abroad through affiliate organizations, using WMF’s name but independently soliciting funds and selecting projects, engaging the social, economic and political elite of a given country to conserve high profile sites according to the highest professional standards. WMF also established the annual Hadrian Award to recognize leadership in the preservation field, as well as the World Monuments Watch Program, compiling a list of one hundred endangered sites every two years. This publication includes a list of major donors as well as a catalogue of projects completed or in progress as of 1995.

Abstract:

This volume was published to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of World Monuments Fund (WMF), the first private, non-profit organization that sponsoring worldwide preservation activities. It consists of a series of project profiles from the defining WMF projects completed or in progress as of 1990. These profiles include the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, as well as a series of buildings restored following the Venice floods of 1966; murals in Mexico City following the earthquake of 1985; the Church of St. Trophime in Arles, France; St. Anne’s Church in New York; the Citadelle Henri in Haiti; and the Angkor Temple complex in Cambodia.